500 Apocalypses

Having previously read Summit, I was hoping for something good from Phantom Williams, and got it - not a story, but hundreds of fragments of stories, from hundreds of ruined civilisations.

There is something reminiscent of Jorge Luis Borges here, or Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities: instead of telling the entire story of a single world, why not take that idea to its logical conclusion and present only the fragments that would survive from such an event?

Many of the fragments are eerie, some are beautiful, others are a little disturbing. Some don't quite seem to qualify as apocalypses. But all leave you wondering: what happened here?

This is best read in bits and pieces, over a long period of time, and without any strategy, but simply by wandering from one passage to another.

(If you were wondering, the title quote comes from Apocalypse 189)

This game was really talked about a lot in the 2016 IFComp. It is unusual; it consists of many (< 500) short stories about apocalypses, many of them grim or with body horror, but with good writing. The player was invited to add to the total number of apocalypses.

I found a lot of the apocalypses very enjoyable. The format was hard for me to navigate, though; I couldn't find new stories at the pace that I wanted to. They are linked by keywords, sometimes, and sometimes not (i.e. there are dead-end links).

I enjoyed it.